July 26, 2006

The Sick-o-Mind's Second Coming - Mind Eraser's 'Glacial Reign'

After I graduated from Ewing High School in June of 1990, all I wanted to do was move to California and ditch my family, my roots and my lame ass central Jersey town for good. While so many of my class mates were contemplating college majors, I was ready for sun, sand and maybe actually talking to a girl. I had my flight booked by the end of June. I also wanted to go out there to see Infest perform live. They were a blinding Hardcore wrecking machine from Valencia, California who only had this one 7” they put out themselves, but I fucking loved it. It was equal parts Brit ’blastbeat’ (Napalm Death) with the most primitive of early 80s’ American Hardcore (DYS, Siege, Deep Wound, The Abused, Negative Approach, etc.) It had a shitty looking Xeroxed sleeve and had no intentions but to slay your ass. I knew it just had to be a completely mind blowing experience live. Well, to make a long story short, within three weeks of my west coast jaunt, I was already back home in Jersey kissing cable television in my parents’ living room without seeing Infest AT ALL. It seemed not one of my Straight Edge pen pals in Cali knew or cared about the band . ‘Dude, those dudes are total druggies’. One of them told a story of how he tried out to be their bass player while the band chain smoked grass in front of him the whole time. He ended off the story with a very passionate ‘Fucking losers!’ and that was that…no Infest for me.

Fast forward a million years later, and I’m in CBGB’s
for some reason. The band on stage is Mind Eraser from Boston and I’m
standing with my jaw on the same floor where my skull was dropkicked
some fifteen years earlier. This was the closest I was going to get to
see Infest in my ‘bad hip’ years and I wasn’t weeping at all. I quickly
ran out and bought everything I could by the young unit and I was
thoroughly impressed. So impressed that I didn’t think twice how I was
a grown man head banging in his living room to the strains of such
tunes as ‘Chewed Up, Spit Out’ and ‘Full Spectral Dominance’.

They just released a brand new spankin’ twelve song 12” e.p named
‘Glacial Reign’ and have to say I’m smitten as hell. These kids have
studied their Infest along with their early 90’s Slap-A-Ham catalogue
(Crossed Out, Capitalist Casualties, etc.) But this ain’t some sorta
loving tribute stuff. From the sludge caked intros to the power drill
pay offs, this is something special that seems to come from the O-Mind
of a first time toke of Freon or something much better/worse. Could
these kids have early 70’s jams by Dark or Bang hidden away in their
collections? I think they could and/or should. If you ‘act now’, you
can get both a vinyl and CD copy of ‘Glacial Reign’ for a mere fifteen
bones. Not only that, they’ll throw in a completely confusing one sided
7” of M.E. covering ‘Teenagers’ by The Meat Puppets. You know…now that
I think about it…these kids are DEFINITELY on drugs…

What about Mind Eraser from NJ? They were local legends when I was in high school in the early 90's. They used to play Connections and Obsessions. Some members were from Morristown and went on to form SHAT.